In a nutshell: Hector Chetwode-Talbot, aka Eck, works for a London hedge fund and specialises in wining and dining his friends to get them to invest large sums of money in schemes that in these glorious early 2000s cannot go wrong. He meets Charlie Summers, a pathetic entrepreneur whose dodgy schemes make him cross paths several times with Eck, for better and for worse.
The blurb: First we are introduced to the narrator Eck, the amiable buffoon, who naively glides from dinner party to shooting party embarking his friends on hopelessly complicated investment schemes that the reader knows are doomed to fail as they involve the very investments that sent the financial world arse over tit in 2008. One of these excursions we meet Charlie, the opportunistic yet hopeless businessman looking to make a name for himself in the world of entrepreneurship.
As the novel progresses and their paths cross we realise that despite their differences, the two characters are strangely parallel, and when the inevitable happens and it all comes crashing down, the two men need each other to redeem themselves in ways that couldn't have been imagined before.
Like Salmon fishing in the Yemen (review here) and the Irresistable Inheritance of Wilberforce (review here) this novel gradually swings from comedy to tragedy, the light tone of the novel betraying a much deeper builup to a dark denouement.
IMHO Paul Torday is my favorite contemporary writer and this book just confirms it. A beautifully written easy read that carries with it a haunting storyline that stays with one for days.
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